It Takes A Special Knack To Unfurl Castnet

August 6, 1987|By Bob Gehrman

Anyone who has anything to do with Florida fishing knows that throwing a castnet is a simple process and part and parcel of the local angling scene. It's also, if you happen to be into ambiance, an integral element in southland color. I mean, who's ever seen a travel ad on television without a brief shot of a colorful character throwing out a castnet in a great billowing circle, with a setting sun in the background?

Of course, those doing the throwing don't do so to add to the local color or in the hope that it will be their entree to a lucrative movie or modeling career. They do it to get bait, and it thus behooves the serious Florida fisherman to become adept at throwing a castnet.

Castnets are, in truth, closely related to bicycles. That is, they're something that Florida kids grow up with, and once learned, the involved techniques never seem to be forgotten. Also, I suspect, the younger you get into castnetting, the easier the whole process becomes. At least, if my personal experience is any criterion, that's certainly the way it seems to be. A little personal history: I came to Florida, well advanced in years, some 20 years ago, and headed immediately for the local fishing hot spots. I asked around and found that live shrimp were the most common bait, but that the real pros favored river minnows, such things as finger mullet, killifish and so forth, as the real trophy producers. Well, no big deal.

Most bait shops don't stock finger mullet because they're too fragile to be consistent profit producers, but they're available almost everywhere at the toss of a castnet. Just pick up an inexpensive castnet at the local discount emporium and you're in business. Hah!

I don't know. Maybe I was, through sheer chance, just plagued by a bad series of castnet teachers. But I suspect the problem is more pandemic than the casual observer might think. I now believe that there are no competent castnet instructors in Florida, and maybe none in the world. In any event, I sought advice from any number of locals who could throw those things out like great unfolding camellia blossoms, but not one could impart his success to me. Oh, I could throw it all right. No problem there. The only difficulty was in getting the darn thing to form into a circle before hitting the water.

''Let's see, gather it like this, shake out the folds so they're not tangled, hold this lead slug in your teeth, and here we go . . . '' Schloomp! For the benefit of the uninitiated, that's the sound made by a big tangled mess of castnet hitting the water. Needless to say, very few finger mullet stood around, paralyzed with laughter, as they waited for my second effort on their behalf.

Oh, I had my moments of success. I would occasionally have the thing open up and I would thus, infrequently, pick up a dozing (or openly defiant) finger mullet. But more consistently, my bait-gathering expeditions were one long series of schloomps punctuated by deleted expletives of a similar sibilance.

Today? Well, after almost 20 years, I really think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. Oh, not that I've developed any real consistency, but at least my percentage of successful casts is growing.

The problem? Not really a single big one, more a series of little incompetencies that my various instructors failed to define. Like trying to throw the net from my starboard side instead of my port and by becoming so rattled after each bad cast that I'd constantly alter my technique in the hope that I'd luck into a successful method through sheer chance.

Of course, during those 20 years of frustration, I became something of an expert on castnetting techniques. Constantly throwing tacos instead of camellia blossoms, I studied everyone I ever saw in the process, and analyzed, analyzed, analyzed. I became a real expert of the ''do as I say, not as I do'' persuasion.

And one day I saw a little tad of about six or seven gather up his castnet into a loose bundle, swing around three or four times like a helicopter, or a hammer thrower during takeoff and I supressed a smile. Nothing in the books even resembled such a technique.

Result? Of course, the prettiest camellia blossom you ever saw. I went home and hid behind the sofa and didn't come out for a week. It's a wonder I ever again gave vent to my awful compulsion to master the castnet.